


The Stars Think You Need to Run

by victoriousscarf



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Noir, M/M, Noirish anyway, one day i will master writing an au one shot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-11
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-02-24 23:27:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2600264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/victoriousscarf/pseuds/victoriousscarf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You’re good at playing,” Dori said. “You could find another band, somewhere—”</p><p>“Respectable?” Ori asked, finally looking back at Dori, whose mouth was tight and his knuckles were white against the bar top. “I doubt it.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [Your Latest Horoscope by Clementine von Radics](http://victoriousscarf.tumblr.com/post/75109048762/vega-ofthe-lyre-love-poem-series-your-latest)
> 
> Inspired by listening to Halestorm ["The Familiar Taste of Poison"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHZKPYQnsmc) while trying to sleep last night and instead this all just appeared.

“I wish you would find another job,” Dori said, the hundredth time that week while Ori leaned against the bar, still holding his saxophone awkwardly. His eyes were scanning the floor and he only half listened to his brother. “It’s too dangerous here—” Dori continued.

“Where would be safer?” Ori asked, distracted, and the saxophone still feeling too big in his hands despite the years he had played it. It always felt wrong, compared to when he held a flute, the high clear notes ringing in his ears. But flutes weren’t nearly as employable, even with an older brother who was good friends with the band manager.

It was how Dori got the job as a bartender, and it was how Ori got the job in the band, because even though Dori threw Nori out the door of their tiny apartment every time he showed up in his crisp suit and slick hair, he could not deny Bofur with his earnest eyes, when he came around in lieu of Nori himself, offering them both work.

“You’re good at playing,” Dori said. “You could find another band, somewhere—”

“Respectable?” Ori asked, finally looking back at Dori, whose mouth was tight and his knuckles were white against the bar top. “I doubt it.”

“You could try,” Dori said and Bofur came bouncing through the floor.

“The band’s back on in five,” he said and Ori pushed away from the bar.

“I’ll see you later,” he said to Dori, not explaining again that he had tried, once, and had failed. Perhaps he was better at his music now, perhaps he wasn’t quite so weak anymore, but he still doubted anyone else would hire him to play music.

They hired him to write for them though, and he often wrote letters out for change for laborers who lived in the same tenement as they did, letters home to their mothers or to their sweethearts who they wanted to impress with correct spelling and legible letters. But that was hardly enough to live on.

Every time Nori came around offering money to help, Dori threw him out again and Ori had begun hiding in the back of their tiny flat when Nori came, not wanting to see his face twisted in anger yet again when Dori closed the door. So they continued to live in a crowded flat with no running water and barely enough clothes to keep themselves looking respectable.

So he stayed and played at the club, because it was not so bad a place, though the patrons were often disputable. Bofur was a kind enough band manager, and sometimes after they closed in the early hours of the morning, he would sit at one of the empty tables, a bottle of imported whiskey at one hand and tell Ori stories about Nori.

Ori never actually thanked him for choosing the stories where Nori was not doing something illegal, and he carefully never mentioned that he knew Bofur met him that way.

He took his place behind the other band members, often sitting toward the back as the singer waltzed onto the stage with a huge grin to applause. Ori was never flashy, so he stayed mostly to the back and watched the others, smiled when he could at their antics, and scanned the floor.

Because it was not every night the Durin brothers came in, but those were the nights he favored most.

They always came in together, shoulders brushing and watching each other’s blind spots before they sat down, and Ori could always tell the moment that Fíli relaxed enough to enjoy the evening when his shoulders relaxed and he leaned the chair back. Kíli, on the other hand, always came in with his limbs loose and looking relaxed, except for the dart of his eyes that never let up until they left again.

The first time they had come in while he played, Ori had missed three whole notes in a row. Bofur had dragged him off the stage afterward and Ori had stammered apologies until Bofur had laid a hand on his shoulder and told him to take a few deep breathes and not make the same mistake again.

Ori wondered afterward, if Bofur had realized why those notes had fallen out of the song.

He never made the mistake again, had never let his playing stumble and falter, but he learned the signs of whether the brothers were having a good night or a bad night, had learned which nights they might come in or they might not.

Tonight was not a good night, and they came in almost at three am, bruises on Kíli’s knuckles and Fíli had a scarf wrapped around his neck despite the warmth of the night, his shoulders tense the whole time.

It had taken Ori a long time at first to approach them, and speak to them, and the first time Fíli had only given him a lazy smile like he had been expecting it to happen. “We’re cousins, aren’t we?”

“Distantly,” Ori said, stiff and nervous and Fíli had kept smiling at him, like it was natural they would talk. Dori had thrown a fit when the brothers had left.

Now when the set ended, Ori automatically went up to the brothers, sliding in beside them. “Did something happen?”

“No,” Fíli said, but he was drinking, throwing back shots.

“Yes,” Kíli said at about the same time. “Don’t worry about it though,” he added, with a laugh that sounded forced even to Ori’s ears. Ori did not have to ask what they had been doing that had ended badly.

“Will you be alright?” he asked instead.

“Sure,” Kíli said. “Give it a day or two to blow over and everything will be _fine_.”

“It will work out,” Fíli said instead, a rumble in his chest and Ori’s hands clenched under the table, the saxophone on the table beside him.

-0-

Ori had a catalog of the wounds Fíli had walked in with.

Bruises on his hands, on his face, cuts on his cheekbone. He had a black eye several times, oddly the same eye on different months and Ori wondered if the same person hit him, or if his left eye was simply unlucky. He split his lip almost as often, and one time neither brother came in for several weeks in a row. Ori had been ready to ask Bofur to ask Nori when they finally returned, and Fíli walked with a limp, and sat with a huff of pain, his ribs cracked and shot in the leg, Ori had found out when the set had ended and he had a chance to rush over.

“You are careful, aren’t you?” he asked and Fíli had stared at him while Kíli huffed.

“He doesn’t know what that word means,” he said and there was obvious anger.

“Shut it, Kíli,” Fíli snapped and Ori had ducked his chin down.

“I wish you would be careful,” he said quietly and Fíli had relented slightly, though he still looked defensive, and a little unsure.

“I’m as careful as I can be,” he said, and Ori saw Kíli open his mouth and click it shut.

As they left that night, Kíli hovered for a moment next to Ori. “His definition of careful isn’t one that belongs to other people,” he said, and his eyes had looked too old for his face, usually so quick to smile.

-0-

Ori knew of Thorin because they were cousins—distantly or not—and Nori had used to speak of him, when he thought Ori could not hear. But even without that, Ori would have known because his name was in the papers, which Ori read every morning, ignoring Dori’s grumbles of what a trash rag the news was.

Ori could not disagree with that appraisal, as the paper often focused on the sensational far more then on honest reporting. But it offered him a glimpse into the beat of the city, of what was happening and what was being talked about, and he liked being informed.

He saw Thorin’s picture before he met him.

The shot was an odd on to see in the paper, his head mostly turned away from the camera, high lighting his cheeks and nose, and he was glaring at someone off the side of the frame. Ori had swallowed hard, and smoothed the paper down on the table, staring at the picture until Dori came back inside from getting milk.

“What is it?” he asked and Ori not been quick enough to hide the picture. “You will have nothing to do with him,” Dori had said, putting his hand over the picture, spreading his fingers out and barely covering Thorin’s head. “Do you hear me?”

“Is he really so bad as that?” Ori asked and Dori’s mouth had thinned in the way it always did when he was particularly angry.

“You will have nothing to do with him,” he declared again and Ori had barely managed to swallow back asking him if he had made the same rule with Nori, and if he really expected Ori to follow it as well as Nori had.

He did not see Thorin in person until months later and he thanked whatever stars were looking out for him that he was leaning against the bar, watching Fíli and Kíli but talking with Dori when Thorin walked in. He had never heard Dori stutter to silence in the middle of a word before, and that was possibly the only thing that allowed him to look away from Thorin approaching his nephews. “Dori?” he asked, softly, and Dori was already leaving. Ori looked at Thorin one more time and followed Dori out to the alley behind the club. “Dori?” he repeated.

“Go back inside,” Dori said, and Ori thought he had quit smoking years ago. “I’ll be along shortly.”

“What is it?” Ori asked and Dori had glared at him until he backed up, and returned inside. Thorin and both his nephews were already gone.

“Does he come to the club often?” Ori asked Bofur, after they had closed up and he was sweeping the club.

“No,” Bofur said, and Dori was washing down the bar. “He doesn’t much.”

The look Dori gave him indicated that might be the only reason Dori stayed there.

-0-

A few weeks later, Fíli waved Ori over when the set ended. “Hey, Ori,” he said, and he looked tired but his smile was the same, bright and lazy, like he had all the time in the world to sit there smiling at Ori.

“What is it?” he asked, sliding into the seat beside him.

“Do you get enough work?” Fíli asked, and Ori tensed because he was as defensive as Dori in some things.

“We make ends meet just fine if that’s what—” he started.

“No, no,” Fíli held a hand up. “Just, our cousin, well, all our cousin I suppose, he’s looking for someone to help. He’s a lawyer and I heard that you were good at numbers and writing and stuff. He just needs an assistant to help out on big cases.”

“Oh,” Ori had said, and the next day he met Fíli at a corner market without telling Dori to go and meet Balin.

When he came back to tell Dori the news, Dori had been excited enough to take him out and pay for dinner for the both of them, though it was greasy and cheap it was better than what Dori could cook himself and Ori appreciated it.

Which is why he did not tell Dori he was fairly certain that Balin for being a respected lawyer, was not quite on the right side of the law either. In fact, Ori wondered how long it would take Dori to realize that Balin worked with Thorin, giving him legal advice and acting as his lawyer the few times Thorin got in enough trouble to be caught.

It was at his office that Ori actually finally met Thorin.

“So you are Dori’s brother,” a deep voice said behind him and Ori startled, dropping the ledgers he was carrying. “I am sorry,” the other continued and Ori turned around, freezing to see Thorin standing there and looking actually abashed. “I did not mean to startle you.”

“It is fine,” Ori said, still too startled to do much as Thorin bent down and picked up the ledgers for him.

He wondered why Thorin labeled him as Dori’s brother and not Nori’s, considering Nori worked with him more often.

“It is nice to finally met you,” Thorin said and Ori only stared at him, still in muted shock as he turned and left.

“Why does your uncle know who I am?” he demanded, the next time Fíli and Kíli came in.

“You’re family,” Fíli said, as if it should have been obvious. “He knows who everyone is.”

Ori opened his mouth, to demand to know more, to understand more, but Fíli tensed, and Ori followed his gaze to the doorway, where several new people had entered. They were all tall and the man in the front had blond hair, a little too long to be fashionable, the woman beside him scanning the club much like Kíli always did, before she brushed her red hair back and murmured something to her companion. As a group they moved, claiming a table in the far corner.

“Who are they?” Ori asked, voice low and Fíli shook his head.

“It does not matter. Kíli, stop staring.”

“I’m not,” Kíli protested, and kept staring.

-0-

“I cannot tell,” Ori confided one night, after most of the other patrons had left for the night except for Fíli and Kíli and a few other. “Whether Thorin is a revolutionary, or a gangster.”

He had been in the papers again, articles decrying his actions and yet printing, word for word, the speeches he made.

Fíli’s laugh was not amused, and he was throwing knives at the dart board, Ori too tired to tell him not to and Bofur staying away. It had been a bad night again. “I am sure he does not know either,” Fíli said, and Kíli had looked at the table.

“Why do you do such dangerous things?” Ori asked another night and Fíli had looked at him for a long moment.

“Because he asks us to,” he said and again Kíli had looked anywhere but his brother.

-0-

“You should not spend so much time with them,” Dori said one lunch, Ori at the stove because he could not stand another of Dori’s attempts at cooking. Dori tended to the bar, because he could not cook, but many times after hours he would sit and talk with Bombur, the club’s cook, about all the food they wished they had the money to eat.

Bombur often sent them home with last night’s left overs and a smile.

“I like them,” Ori said, quietly.

“That’s not enough,” Dori said, and it felt like Nori had not come around in quite some time.

“Why not?” Ori asked. “Because you disapprove?”

“Because it’s dangerous,” Dori snapped and he broke the mug he was holding and looked at the ceramic pieces in pain before looking back up at Ori. “Are our lives not dangerous enough?”

“To talk with them is not putting me in any more danger,” Ori said and Dori’s eyes said _not yet._

-0-

“Do you like to dance?” Kíli asked one night, and Bofur had stopped trying to kick them out at closing any more, Ori sweeping again that night, even though he was in the band and it was not technically one of his duties.

“What?” he asked and blushed, Fíli smoking at the table behind Kíli and watching him with dark eyes.

“Do you like to dance?” Kíli asked, holding his hands out and swishing his hips around for a moment. Ori blushed, because Fíli was looking at him with dark eyes and suddenly Kíli was there, sweeping him off his feet and around the floor that was empty now of other dancers, and Ori stumbled and failed and laughed because he loved to watch dancers, but had no idea how to actually step.

“You’re horrible at this,” Kíli said, and he was grinning while Ori just kept laughing because there was something freeing in being thrown around by someone who grinned like that.

“You’re a rubbish teacher,” Fíli said, and suddenly he was there and there was nothing funny when he took Ori’s hands instead, pulling him against his chest. “Let me show you.”

“That’s quite alright,” Ori said, breathless and Fíli stared at him, before he moved their hands.

“You hold it like this,” he said and swayed their arms. “Loose.”

“Loose,” Ori repeated, and he really couldn’t breathe, Fíli standing too close and touching him and he realized with a sickening lurch that he was already too far gone to come back.

“Stop it, all of you,” Dori snapped. “We need to go home, Ori, now.”

For a moment Ori opened his mouth, still staring at Fíli’s eyes before he dropped his hands and stepped back. He did not even say good night, and he felt Fíli’s eyes on him the whole way out the door.

-0-

The next night, there were bruises on Fíli’s face again, and he had a split lip.

“You’re too reckless,” Kíli said and was glaring when Ori approached with shaking hands.

“Shut it,” Fíli said instead.

“Well,” Kíli allowed, and his head was in his hands, elbows braced on the table. “At least you aren’t clumsy.”

“Thank Mahal for that,” Fíli said, and it seemed like in the space of just a minute things were fine between the brothers again, in the space of mere moments. Ori sat down, clutching his saxophone to his chest because he would never dare casually say Mahal’s name like that.

He had made the mistake once, in school as a child, fresh off the boat and when Dori and Nori and he all lived together still. He had been beaten for it, and the teacher had glared down at him, scolding him for daring to say the name of a pagan god where others could hear.

He had cried that night, not understanding fully why it was wrong to say Mahal’s name, or what pagan meant.

Somehow, he thought, looking at Fíli, even at that age he had probably taken the beatings and only allowed it to make him stronger.

“Ori?” Kíli asked, looking at him. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” he said. “Are you fine.”

“We will be,” Fíli said.

-0-

“Did you love Thorin?” Ori asked, because it felt like the pieces had slotted together in his head finally and Dori stopped, rag in one hand.

“What?” he asked, voice totally flat.

“Is that why you’re so angry?” Ori asked, and he felt brave for speaking the words, even though he wanted to turn and run and pretend he had never asked the question for the way Dori’s face had collapsed.

“Don’t talk about things like you know,” Dori snapped instead of answering.

Ori had looked down, and ignored the way Dori had avoided him for the rest of the evening, though he could feel his eyes on him the whole time he was on stage. Because he felt like maybe he did know.

Because when he looked at Fíli, smiling or bleeding or angry, he felt a twist in his stomach, a flutter in his chest and he wanted to scream and cry and run.

He had not figured out if he wanted to run away or toward Fíli.

He ran away first, as it turned out, one night when Fíli came in late, lip bleeding and Ori turned and went into the back alley because it hurt too much to look at him, to ache with looking at him.

“Ori?” Fíli asked, behind him. “Is something wrong?”

“You followed,” Ori said in some surprise. “Nothing’s wrong, I just needed air.”

“This isn’t very kind air,” Fíli said, tone wry considering the alley stank and there was smoke in the air and the docks were not far away. They lived in the wrong part of town, and everything stank of it.

Ori ducked his head instead of saying anything and he startled when Fíli touched his arm, pulling him around. “What’s wrong?” he asked, and his voice was too warm, and he was too close.

“You’re going to be terrible for me,” Ori said and Fíli’s eyes widened in hurt and surprise before Ori surged up, slamming their mouths together with no grace. For a horrible moment he hung there, Fíli frozen, their mouths pressed together awkwardly.

Ori swallowed as he dropped back down, but before he could move away, Fíli grabbed his arms, holding him there and his eyes were shadowed in the faint light of the alley. “I am going to be terrible for you,” he said, and his voice was low and Ori felt it like it was vibrating all the way up his arms.

“I don’t care,” he said faintly.

“I’m going to be dangerous for you,” Fíli said. “I’m going to be everything you don’t deserve to have in your life.”

“Please,” was all Ori said and Fíli kissed him.

Giddily, Ori realized he had left his saxophone unattended inside for the first time since he had started playing at the club. But that thought was lost in the warmth of Fíli’s mouth and the way his hands slid along Ori’s shoulders. “Please,” he repeated, and for one glorious moment nothing else mattered.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your music: [Juliet](http://youtu.be/F9RVafvI6EM) by Emilie Autumn

“You play the saxophone really well,” Fíli said, one night with smoke curling around his face and he watched Ori with dark eyes that made him shiver.

“Thank you,” he murmured, and Kíli looked like he was trying to ignore them.

“Is it what you always played?” Fíli asked, shaking ash off the end of his cigarette.

“No,” Ori said, nervous because he had rarely spoken about his love of the flute, of how he had learned on the small silver instrument and only moved to the larger, golden saxophone because he had to. “I played the flute first.”

“The flute?” Fíli asked in surprise before he smiled. “I never heard you play that.”

“Few have,” Ori said and his throat was dry.

Fíli leaned back, still smoking and watching him. “I would love to hear you play some time,” he said. “The flute, I mean. You could come over,” and there was a note of something else in his voice as he said it. Ori licked his lips and nodded, because aside from a few stolen moments they had never been alone together, never more than a few quick touches in the dark and always on neutral territory.

Fíli had never come over to his tenement, and he had never seen even the section of town where Fíli lived.

“Yes,” he said too quickly.

Later that night, Bofur sat on a chair backward, arms folded over the top of the back. “You play differently now,” he said. “You’re getting better at it.”

“I was always good,” Ori protested. “Or you would have never hired me.”

“You were competent,” Bofur corrected. “One of the best I’ve seen, but you played like you were playing classical music. But now, you’ve loosened up, there’s more passion. You’re finally figuring out the heart of jazz.”

“And what’s that?” Ori asked, already mostly knowing the answer.

“Improvisation and passion,” Bofur said with a grin and neither of them said why Ori had found exactly that. 

Instead, when he got home in the wee hours of the morning, he pulled out his flute for the first time in ages and practiced it. Dori shut the door of his bedroom and made no comment.

-0-

“The flute was my mothers,” Ori said, nervously holding it and Fíli’s apartment which he shared with Kíli and sometimes his uncle was not much better than his own, though it was in a slightly better part of town. It was higher off the ground at least. “We all learned to play on it, as children. She taught Dori and they both taught Nori and Dori taught me.”

“Did she die when you were so young?” Fíli asked, moving around the apartment and fussing with things that did not matter to Ori in the least, moving stacks of pamphlets and pillows around as if that would make things cleaner.

“Yes,” Ori said quietly. “I never knew my father. Dori and Nori, they’re the family I have.”

“We,” Fíli started and sighed, realizing what he had been about to say.

“I want to play for you,” Ori said, rather than let the silence stretch any further. “Will you let me?”

“Yes,” Fíli said, and his eyes were dark again. Ori did not ask where Kíli was that night. Instead he perched on the edge of the couch and brought the flute up to his lips. It had been a long time since he had played with anyone listening, and never with someone watching him the way Fíli was.

He had never tried to improvise with the flute before, never let the music flow from it and himself instead of a memorized pattern and he lost himself in it for a while until Fíli leaned forward, taking the flute away from his mouth and replacing it with his own lips.

Ori moaned, because Fíli’s mouth was hot against his own, and his fingers were curled around Ori’s chin and his hand that still held the flute. “Stay,” he murmured.

“You would have to throw me out to make me leave,” Ori said instead of anything else he thought of and Fíli kissed him like they were both drowning and needed to kiss long enough that they could both fly.

-0-

When Ori woke in the morning, he did not feel like his world had changed completely, or tilted on its axis, but he did feel different in his own skin because someone else had touched it and loved it. He had memories instead of only fantasies about what it was like to touch Fíli and the way Fíli kissed down his chest and the feel of rough hands smoothing gently over his body and pulling pleasure out of him like the muffled screams that came along with it.

He lay in Fíli’s bed for a long time, smelling the sheets and remembering before he finally pulled himself up and went looking for Fíli who was in the kitchen and arguing with Kíli. Ori hovered in the door, not quite noticed.

“It is our uncle’s cause,” Fíli said, cooking eggs on a creaky stove and Kíli scowled at him.

“I don’t care about that,” he started to say when his brother cut him off.

“It is our cause too. It is all our people’s cause.

“It will get you—us—killed,” Kíli snapped and his hands had come up to twist in Fíli’s shirt. “I want you safe, I want us all safe but I just want you safe.”

Fíli turned off the stove and turned around to embrace his brother. “It will be alright,” he said and for a moment Kíli allowed it before shoving away.

“I just don’t understand why we can’t work together and Ori saw Fíli’s face shut down. “It’s not so odd.”

“We’ve been fighting over the lowest rung of the social ladder for a long time,” Fíli said, turning away. “It’s not so easy to forget.”

“Others are doing it,” Kíli protested. “With the rum and stuff, it’s easier than ever to work together we don’t have to fight anymore—”

“Which requires us to forget years of history and strife,” Fíli pointed out, pulling down chipped plates. “It’s not going to work, especially not with Thorin and especially not with Thranduil. With Bard, maybe, but I doubt it.”

“If we worked together there would be less death,” Kíli said and Fíli looked at him for a moment in a way that Ori could not read, still unnoticed in the doorway.

Instead of replying he turned around though and startled to see Ori standing there. “Oh,” he said and smiled in such a way that made Ori’s stomach lurch and he was drawn to Fíli like a moth to an open flame, approaching before he realized his feet were moving. “I was just going to wake you up,” Fíli rumbled and Ori could remember what Fíli’s voice felt like pressed against his chest so he had to lean up and kiss Fíli right there, with eggs warm on the stove and his brother standing right there.

Kíli’s eyes widened and he turned away, muttering something but those things were incidental to Ori, because Fíli’s mouth was warm and it made his fingers ache that he was drawing Fíli’s breath into his lungs now.

-0-

Ori started to learn new ways of knowing when Fíli had a good day or bad day. The wounds remained more or less the same, and one time he came in with bruises around his throat, like someone tried to strangle him and Ori actually dropped the saxophone on stage for a moment before he scooped it back up. The image of someone pinning Fíli down and taking all the breath out of him made his fingers too lose and Bofur did not even comment on it that night.

But instead of only that, Ori now knew how to read the ways Fíli touched him.

On a good day, his touch was firm, and he would spend hours they did not have to spare taking Ori apart, kissing his collarbone and moving his mouth all the way down Ori’s body.

On bad days, Fíli’s touch was desperately gentle, like he was afraid both of losing Ori and of hurting him. On those days, Ori took his face in both hands and kissed him as deeply as he could, twining their legs together and holding on, like he could communicate that everything would be okay with his tongue in Fíli’s mouth alone.

-0-

He still spent most of his nights with Dori, but his brother stopped talking about it, instead only telling him good night quietly as he left.

Most nights they stayed in, and Ori learned that Kíli technically had his own flat on the floor above, but he spent a fair amount of nights on Fíli’s couch anyway and Ori decided not to comment or ask about that. They fought a lot, something Ori had never realized.

They were not vicious fights, not like Dori and Nori would get into, but sometimes Kíli would cry and sometimes Fíli would yell loud enough that Ori was reminded of the way Thorin would make speech after speech to whoever would listen.

But sometimes they would have breakfast in tiny little restaurants jammed into cellars and back alleys. and some nights the three of them would go out and it would be wonderful for a while. Fíli never was foolish enough to kiss Ori in public, nor even dance with him at the jazz clubs, but Ori would sit pressed against his side, and sometimes Fíli would drape one arm over him, the other holding his cigarette and Ori would feel light headed.

Those were the nights where he still felt like they were flying.

One night Nori walked into the same club and for a moment Ori did not notice him, too focused on feeling Fíli’s words, tucked against his side and when he finally looked toward the door Nori was staring with wide eyes.

Somehow Nori managed to pry Ori away and in the back corner of the club, where it was quiet and they were as close to alone as they had been in a long time. “Are you mad?” Nori demanded, and Ori realized he probably knew more about Thorin and the brothers then Dori did. Ori wondered if Nori had been there when Thorin and Dori had done whatever it was they had done because Dori still refused to talk about it.

“I’m not mad,” Ori protested, quiet, and he wished he could hide behind the knitwear he used to be able to wear all the time until he started playing at the band in the club. Knitted clothing was fashionable now, but mostly as fitted sweaters and that wasn’t the same as being all but swaddled in Dori’s hand made efforts.

“Really?” Nori asked and his eyes looked too old and Ori hated that this was the first real conversation they were having in years. “Gonna tell me you love him?”

“I do,” Ori said, jaw set and Nori rocked back on his heels.

“Ori, you don’t know,” he started and floundered.

“I know enough,” Ori snapped. “I’m not a child.” Nori gave him a look and Ori shook his head. “Please don’t start,” he murmured. “Come, sit with us instead, we can talk for a while. I just don’t want to hear it.”

“I’m scared for you,” Nori said. “I’m still your big brother, I still get to be.” But he followed Ori back and sat and talked with him and Fíli and Kíli when Kíli wasn’t dancing and Ori realized his brother knew the others better than he knew Ori. He squashed that pain down and focused on the time they had instead of dwelling on it or why.

-0-

A year snuck up on Ori before he knew it. He had once counted so carefully ever single kiss, every time they lay together and he realized all at once he could no longer remember a number. It had all blurred together into a long moment of Fíli and his dark eyes and the smoke caught in his mouth when Ori kissed him.

“I love you,” Fíli murmured into his hair and Ori shifted, stretching against his body and twining his hands in Fíli’s blond hair.

“Yes,” he agreed and Fíli gave him a quiet smile, nuzzling his ear and Ori tilted his neck back, all their bare skin sliding against each other.

At breakfast, Kíli already out the door, Ori had leaned against the table and kissed Fíli. “I love you too,” he said and left for Balin’s office before he would play at the club that night.

Neither of the brothers showed up all night and Ori kept playing, eyes darting to the door because Fíli had said they would probably come.

He went to bed that night, remembering Fíli’s quiet voice forming words he had been waiting for, and the taste of his mouth and the bruises he had on his ribs and tried to sleep without worrying. It was just one night, something had come out like so many things came up.

Except when he walked out that morning Dori was holding the paper in lose fingers, eyes distant and he might not even have been breathing. Dori, who mocked the paper and yet never threw it out until after Ori was done with it.

Before Dori realized he was there or could stop him, Ori snatched it out of his limp hands.

“No,” Dori protested, lunging after him when he snapped out of his shock but it was too late.

A keen tore out of Ori’s throat before he fully processed what was on the front page. He did not want to know which officer had allowed the reporter to take the picture of the crime scene, but they had got a shot that covered all the bodies in the street. Thorin of course was the main focus but Kíli could be seen next to him, only half his profile. The third body was harder to make out, as it was turned on its side away from the camera, blood drenching the suit and hair but Ori would have to be dead himself not to know the curve of Fíli’s ear, or the spray of his golden hair or the shape of his hands. Fíli’s body half lay over Thorin’s and one of his hands was reaching for Kíli and Ori almost tore the paper before Dori took it back from him and he was wailing and screaming while Dori held him.

His eyes kept coming back to the blood on Fíli’s hair, the holes in his chest and he couldn’t breathe and he only realized Dori was crying later too.

-0-

It took Ori almost a day to read the full article, though it told him almost nothing. Simply that it was a gang killing, an assassination and all three of the Durins had been taken out at once. There were other bodies, further down the street but they were goons, obviously the ones sent to the do the killing, not important enough for their deaths to matter beyond statistics.

Bombur sent food and Bofur didn’t ask him to play in the band even though he kept paying him during the week between the deaths and the funeral. “I don’t know what you plan on doing,” Bofur said, setting bills in Ori’s hands and Ori had barely reacted. Bofur stroked his hair and sighed, moving away and still Ori barely reacted.

Dori murmured the day before the funeral, “You have to keep living,” and Ori had managed to nod.

But all he could think about was Fíli’s hand reaching for Kíli and that hand had been warm, had traced the curve of his spine the morning before, had held Ori and Ori had stroked that hair when it had been glowing in the dim lights from the street below, had twined his fingers in it when it was clean of blood.

Some times Ori did not know how he kept breathing without wailing.

He stood in stony silence next to Dori with the rest of their family, cousins he had never really met and he recognized most of them from stories that the brothers had told him, or from Balin’s office. Nori was on his other side but they did not speak. A tall man Ori figured to be Dwalin stood on Nori’s other side, and Balin on his other side and beyond him a woman with thick dark hair and a single diamond pin who Ori supposed was Dis, Thorin’s sister and Fíli and Kíli’s mother.

He wanted to go up to her, wanted to tell her he loved her son so much, had treasured him. He adored Kíli too, but it was not the punch to the gut that his feelings for Fíli were, the desperate need and tender kisses and careful whispers in the dark where no one else could hear them. He wanted to meet her eyes and tell her he had loved her son so much and he had been loved back.

But he looked straight forward instead, at the caskets and it made him twist up inside, a hollowed out place growing more and more in his chest.

A tall blond stepped out of the crowd, holding a knife and a strange rose, the color of which Ori was not sure he had ever seen before and both Dori and Nori tensed, Dwalin on Nori’s other side starting to move forward. The man glanced at them for a scathing moment before he placed both items on Thorin’s casket and moved away. Others started coming forward now and left their own flowers all over the caskets and for a moment Ori wanted to laugh, because they were being buried in flowers, not in the earth, and what poems, what music he could make about that image. Except he was choking and crying, bending over in half and sinking down, Dori catching him and coming down with him with his strong arms wrapped around Ori’s shoulders as he sobbed, trying to muffle the sounds with his hands. Finally, when most of the other on lookers had left, Ori approached the caskets. His brushed his fingers along Thorin’s first, and he knew there were still people, still watching him, Dis’ eyes dark and heavy at his back. He continued around to touch Kíli’s, whispering quiet words to him, a joke they had shared, telling him that Ori would be fine and that he would miss Kíli, and he hoped that whatever afterlife existed, Kíli would cause as much trouble and be as happy there.

Except all those words dried up when he came around the other side and laid both his hands on Fíli’s casket. He wanted to sink down against it and not get up again, not keep living because the body that he had twined around and loved and made moan his name was cold and empty below his hands and he could come up with no shared jokes, no calm words, no wishes for whatever afterlife there might be. “Wait,” he said instead. “If there are halls of Mandos, I will find you there,” he whispered viciously instead. “I need back what you took from me.” And he wanted to bend down and kiss at least the casket but he stiffened his back instead, squared his shoulders and walked away.

Dori lingered a moment longer, looking with naked pain and longing at Thorin’s casket before both he and Nori followed Ori, Nori jogging to catch up and Dori trailing behind. It had started to drizzle, a faint film of rain obscuring the distance.

“I’m going to take care of you,” Nori said and Ori stopped, turning to stare at him and there was flint and steel in his eyes.

“No,” he said and Nori opened his mouth, to demand Ori not be like Dori, not to reject him, because family mattered, it still had to matter, their family had lost too many members too suddenly and they had to stick together but Ori shook his head. “No, because I’m going to take care of myself.”

He turned and walked away from both of his brothers then, back straight and a hole in his chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 3 is going to be about Dori and Thorin


End file.
